Business IT - Efficiency Through Innovation

Given the current economic climate, businesses have had to trim the fat in every way possible. One of the key areas of concentration for quite some time has been a growing need to make the most efficient use of technical resources, in the form of increased output with less energy consumption and a smaller footprint. This has attributed to the current push towards technical innovation in the forms of virtualization, cloud computing, and hardware efficiency.

Intel and Sun have teamed together in creating midmarketinnovators.com to provide a source of collaborative business and technology insights to Mid-Market companies, which are usually those with 100-999 employees. Increased efficiency applied to businesses which fall in this category can have quite an impact on their bottom lines.

Efficiency in hardwareIntel, in designing the new 5500 series Nehalem-based Xeon processors has implemented numerous energy savings features to lower costs in the data center. As demonstrated by this cool animation prepared by Intel, the new Xeon has the ability to adjust power consumption dynamically based on current computing requirements. Multiply these cost saving features times the number of multi-processor servers in the data center, and factor in the increased performance of the platform, and quite a bit of savings can be achieved.

Most companies try to put off upgrading workstations unil they either fail or a very good reason is given for the outlay of money. Our own Shane Unrein presents a compelling argument for upgrading workstations to achieve higher efficiency. If a task can be completed quicker using a newer, faster workstation then the initial investment will be recouped in the long run via increased employee output. Time spent waiting for applications to load or complete tasks on an outdated workstation is time lost in productivity, and therefore a reduction in efficiency.

Recent developments in technology can also be applied enterprise-wide, helping companies become more competitive on a global scale. As always though, there are multiple sides to any argument. What are your thoughts regarding these trends? Feel free to comment on Shane’s post.